LAW OF THE LAND

Alabama moves to oust Judge Moore

In pretrial brief AG Pryor renounces 'sensational flouting' of court

In a pretrial brief, Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor requested Chief Justice Roy Moore be removed from office for defying a federal judge’s order to move a granite Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building.

Moore is scheduled to appear tomorrow before the state Court of the Judiciary in a trial-like proceeding where he faces a number of possible outcomes, from exoneration to removal from office.

Roy Moore speaking to supporters and press in August (Photo: WSFA.com)

In his brief, Pryor said the judge should be removed because he “intentionally and publicly engaged in misconduct, and because he remains unrepentant for his behavior.”

The chief justice should receive the severest penalty for his “sensational flouting of a valid federal injunction,” Pryor wrote.

Moore, who was suspended with pay Aug. 22, said he is “concerned about the court’s appearance” of bias, but he would not say whether he believed a fair trial is possible.

“I certainly have my personal opinion,” he said, according to the Mobile Register.

Asked if he would reveal it, he responded with a smile, “Well … no.”

On Aug. 5, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ordered removal of the washing machine-sized monument by Aug. 20. Thompson had ruled it violates the Constitution’s ban on government establishment of religion and must be removed from its public place in the rotunda.

Moore refused to remove the monument, declaring, “The point is, it’s not about violation of order, it’s about violation of my oath of office.”

“And my oath of office to the Constitution requires an acknowledgment of God,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

As WorldNetDaily reported the monument, which Moore installed two years ago, was moved Aug. 28 from the rotunda of the Judicial Building to a non-public back room.

Meanwhile, supporters have organized a “Save the Commandments and Keep Chief Justice Moore Tour” that began Sunday and will conclude tomorrow in front of the judicial building in Montgomery.

Tour organizer Rob Schenk said the purpose is to “bring the principles at stake here into the public arena once again.”

Schenk said he is most concerned about upholding the right of Americans “to acknowledge the sovereignty of God over our land.”

“Secular nations have one thing in common – mass graves, and the reason is that they believe the government is the final arbiter of right and wrong and good and evil,” he said.

Moore is not alone in his struggle to promote the Ten Commandments. Some two dozen similar disputes have gone to court since 2000.

Editor’s note:“THE MYTH OF CHURCH-STATE SEPARATION” – the special November edition of WND’s acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine – documents conclusively that the modern legal doctrine of “separation of church and state” is the work of activist judges, and has utterly no basis in the Constitution.